Northland icon and NZ's oldest shop in line for retail award

Liz Bigwood at Kerikeri's Stone Store

One of Northland's best loved historical sites is a finalist for a national retail award for managing the balance between being a living museum and a shop.

The New Zealand Retail Association has nominated the Stone Store as a finalist in the Best Provincial Retailer category of the 2018 Retail Hotlist awards.

The association praised the way the Stone Store shop "balances its role as a living museum with a successful and beautifully merchandised retail operation".

Stone Store manager Liz Bigwood said she was delighted with the nomination.

"The Stone Store began as a trading post in 1836, and has been in business in one form or another pretty well since then," Bigwood said.

Trade of iron tools and implements, cloth, and basic foodstuffs like flour, tea, and sugar were stock in trade with local Maori back then.

"It was primarily this trade and the attraction of shipping into the eastern Bay of Islands that Hongi Hika and other Ngapuhi leaders intended when they allowed a missionary settlement there.

"In later years, people used to say of the store that you could buy anything from a needle to an anchor, and we continue that tradition by stocking a wide range of goods, including authentic items similar to those that would have been on sale in the 19th Century," Bigwood said.

"The nomination acknowledges the special nature of the Stone Store as a unique retail operation, and the team that makes it so special."

The awards take place on June 6.